It is perhaps a buffalo which
is represented on an ancient tablet already referred to, where a lion
is disturbed in the middle of his feast off a prostrate animal by a man
armed with a hatchet. Cows and oxen, however, of the common kind are
occasionally represented on the cylinders [PLATE IX., Fig. 4.], where
they seem sometimes to represent animals about to be offered to the
gods. Goats also appear frequently in this capacity; and they were
probably more common than sheep, at any rate in the more southern
districts. Of Babylonian sheep we have no representations at all on the
monuments; but it is scarcely likely that a country which used wool so
largely was content to be without them. At any rate they abounded in the
provinces, forming the chief wealth of the more northern nations.

CHAPTEE III. THE PEOPLE.

"The Chaldaeans, that bitter and hasty nation."--Habak. 1. 6.

The Babylonians, who, under Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, held the
second place among the nations of the East, were emphatically a mixed
race. The ancient people from whom they were in the main descended--the
Chaldaeans of the First Empire--possessed this character to a
considerable extent, since they united Cusbite with Turanian blood, and
contained moreover a slight Semitic and probably a slight Arian element.
But the Babylonians of later times--the Chaldaeans of the Hebrew
prophets--must have been very much more a mixed race than their earlier
namesakes--partly in consequence of the policy of colonization pursued
systematically by the later Assyrian kings, partly from the direct
influence exerted upon them by conquerors. Whatever may have been the
case with the Arab dynasty, which bore sway in the country from about
B.C. 1546 till B.C. 1300, it is certain that the Assyrians conquered
Babylon about B.C. 1300, and almost certain that they established
an Assyrian family upon the throne of Nimrod, which held for some
considerable time the actual sovereignty of the country. It was natural
that under a dynasty of Semites, Semitic blood should flow freely into
the lower region, Semitic usages and modes of thought become prevalent,
and the spoken language of the country pass from a Turanian or
Turano-Cushite to a Semitic type. The previous Chaldaean race blended,
apparently, with the new comers, and people was produced in which the
three elements--the Semitic, the Turanian, and the Cushite--held about
equal shares. The colonization of the Sarg